The Quest for a Monopoly on Violenceby Norman Solomonwww.dissidentvoice.org
April 8, 2004

With
warfare escalating in Iraq, syndicated columnist George Will has just
explained the logic of the occupation. “In the war against the militias,” he
wrote, “every door American troops crash through, every civilian bystander
shot -- there will be many -- will make matters worse, for a while.
Nevertheless, the first task of the occupation remains the first task of
government: to establish a monopoly on violence.”

A year ago, when a
Saddam statue famously collapsed in Baghdad, top officials in Washington
preened themselves as liberators. Now, some of the tyrant’s bitterest
enemies are firing rocket-propelled grenades at American troops.

Hypocrisy about press
freedom has a lot to do with the current Shiite insurrection. Donald
Rumsfeld had an easy retort seven months ago when antiwar protesters
interrupted his speech at the National Press Club in Washington. “You know,
I just came in from Baghdad,” he said, “and there are now over 100
newspapers in the free press in Iraq, in a free Iraq, where people are able
to say whatever they wish.” But actually, Iraq’s newspapers “are able to say
whatever they wish” only if they wish to say what the occupiers accept.

A week before a
militia loyal to Moktada al-Sadr began to assault U.S. soldiers, the
American occupation authorities ordered a 60-day shutdown of Sadr’s
newspaper Al Hawza. The New York Times reported near the end of an April 5
article: “Although the paper did not print any calls for attacks, the
American authorities said false reporting, including articles that ascribed
suicide bombings to Americans, could touch off violence.”

There’s an idea --
closing a newspaper for “false reporting” that could “touch off violence.”
By that standard, most of the daily papers in the United States (beginning
with the New York Times) could have been shut down in late 2002 and early
2003 as they engaged in “false reporting” about purported weapons of mass
destruction in Iraq.

That false reporting
certainly touched off violence. Thanks to the invasion and occupation of
Iraq, the number of dead is in the tens of thousands, and rising by the
hour. True to form -- as was the case during the Vietnam War -- the
president certainly knows how to keep ordering the use of violence on a
massive scale.

“We took space back
quickly, expensively, with total panic and close to maximum brutality,” war
correspondent Michael Herr recalled about the U.S. military in Vietnam. “Our
machine was devastating. And versatile. It could do everything but stop.”

Despite all the
belated media exposure of the Bush administration’s prewar lies, we are now
seeing a familiar spectrum of response in mainstream U.S. media -- many
liberals wringing their hands, many conservatives rubbing their hands -- at
the sight of military escalation.

Numerous commentators
have criticized President Bush for policy flaws. The tactical critiques are
profuse, as when an April 6 editorial by the New York Times lamented that
Washington “and its occupation partners” are now “in real danger of handing
over a meaningless badge of sovereignty to a government that is divided
internally, is regarded as illegitimate by the people and has no means other
than foreign armies in Iraq to enforce its authority.”

Such carefully chosen
language is notable for what it does not say: Get U.S. troops out of Iraq.

Year after year, of
course, the White House and the editorialists insisted that complete
withdrawal of GIs from Vietnam was an irresponsible notion, a bumper-sticker
idea lacking in realism. But withdrawal had to happen. Sooner, with fewer
deaths and less suffering? Or later?

In contrast to the
wavering bugles of Bush’s circumspect critics, we hear the certain trumpets
from the likes of George Will. “Regime change, occupation, nation-building
-- in a word, empire -- are a bloody business,” he wrote at the end of
April’s first week. “Now Americans must steel themselves for administering
the violence necessary to disarm or defeat Iraq’s urban militias, which
replicate the problem of modern terrorism -- violence that has slipped the
leash of states.”

As for the carnage
that results from unleashing the Pentagon’s violence, the rationales are
inexhaustible. “There are thugs and terrorists in Iraq who are trying to
shake our will,” White House spokesman Scott McClellan told reporters on
April 6. “And the president is firmly committed to showing resolve and
strength.”

Martin Luther King Jr.
said: “I never intend to adjust myself to the madness of militarism.”